The Biden administration advanced plans to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority despite internal assessments that those plans could boost Hamas, the Washington Free Beacon reported on Wednesday.
According to internal documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, State Department officials in 2021 outlined the concerns, asking the Treasury Department to exempt them from laws that bar the US government from injecting taxpayer aid into territories controlled by Palestinian terror groups. The Biden administration needed this authorization in order to move forward with its plans to unfreeze more than $360 million in US funds for the PA that were cut off during the Trump administration due to the authority's support for terrorists.
"We assess there is a high risk Hamas could potentially derive indirect, unintentional benefit from US assistance to Gaza. There is less, but still, some risk US assistance would benefit other designated groups," the State Department wrote in a draft sanctions exemption request circulated internally in March 2021, shortly after Biden took office. "Notwithstanding this risk, the State believes it is in our national security interest to provide assistance in the West Bank and Gaza to support the foreign policy objectives."
The documents—obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust—show the Biden administration was privately worried its efforts to restart Palestinian aid could benefit Hamas and other terror factions operating in the Gaza Strip. As officials publicly provided assurances to Congress and the press that this aid would be doled out "consistent with US law," the State Department was scrambling to secure a sanctions exemption that would let it skirt anti-terrorism laws.
The State Department claimed it needed broad authorities to conduct work in the Judea and Samaria and Gaza Strip "that would otherwise be prohibited by the Global Terrorist Sanctions Regulations and the Foreign Terrorist Organization Sanctions Regulations," according to a draft version of the request.
"Such authorization would enable activities, including assistance activities, that are critical to support the administration's efforts to advance prosperity, security, and freedom for both Israelis and Palestinians and to advance and preserve the prospects of a negotiated solution in which Israel lives in peace and security alongside a viable Palestinian state," according to the draft request.
State Department officials did not immediately return a request for comment on whether its assessment about the risk of US aid strengthening Hamas was ultimately transferred to the Treasury Department or if the reference was deleted before the request was sent. The Treasury Department declined to comment on the matter, citing a policy of not discussing exemptions that may have been granted.
The administration ultimately moved forward with its plans to restart Palestinian aid just months after the State Department’s internal wrangling over the issue.
One US official familiar with the matter told the Free Beacon that the State Department's early assessment of the risks of restarting aid should have given the Biden administration pause.
"The fact that there was a high risk that Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization, would benefit from US assistance should have been enough to at least give the administration some pause in resuming aid, if not keep it from restarting it altogether," said the official, who would only discuss the matter on background.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, commented on the report: "Today's report again confirms that Joe Biden and Biden administration officials are pathologically obsessed with undermining Israel. They made a day-one decision to pour hundreds of millions of American taxpayer dollars into areas controlled by Palestinian terrorists, despite knowing that such actions would benefit terrorist groups that have the blood of Americans and Israelis on their hands. State Department officials knew that doing so risked violating the most basic American laws prohibiting assistance that benefits terrorists, and so they rushed to lawlessly exempt themselves from those restrictions."
He added: "I led Republican efforts to stop such payments at the beginning of the Biden administration. Biden officials told Congress and the public that what they were doing was consistent with United States laws. It was clear at the time that they could not be telling the truth and that their plans were brazenly inconsistent with anti-terrorism laws. Today's report confirms they knew they were lying.
Cruze concluded: "The report provides yet another example in which State Department officials told Congress that they support the U.S.-Israel relationship and are committed to countering Palestinian terrorism and then — out of view — they pushed policies designed to undermine that relationship and benefit terrorist groups. These trends have made congressional oversight and the expeditious vetting of nominees for Middle East-related positions intractable.”